Spatial Aspects of the Restructuring of the Hungarian Economy Between 2000 and 2019

In the years following the regime change of 1989-90, Hungary faced numerous economic and political challenges. Apart from the dominance of privatisation, the ‘90s can definitely be described as a decade of transition. The performance of the Hungarian economy had reached the pre-transition level by the turn of the millennium, while the labour market and the structure of economic sectors had undergone substantial changes. In the present paper, we investigate how stable the developed sectoral structure proved to be in the two decades that followed and what territorial specificities the changes were characterised by. Our main question is how further structural changes – besides the sectors’ performance (productivity) growth – contributed to the changing economic performance of territorial units in the period of 2000-2019. In our study, we divide productivity change into a “between-sector” and a “within-sector” element. We regard the analysis as a relevant research question in general as well. However, the global financial crisis occurring at the “mid-term” of the studied period (2008) represents a special rupture. The analysis framework is provided by the counties (NUTS3 regions), we conduct our analysis in this context. It can be established that the primary factor of productivity growth is the increase of performance within sector groups and not the change in the economic structure of counties. The impact of structural changes is smaller in magnitude and may even have a negative value in several cases, i.e., the economic structure of counties has shifted from higher-productivity sectors towards those with lower productivity

A fibrocyte model for monitoring environmental chemicals

Human activity affects all elements of the Earth's environment and the system of relationships between them. Chlorobenzenes created during chemicalization are capable of modulating the adaptation potential of biological organisms and because of their high frequency of occurrence in the food chain, they can be used as expositors in environmental exposure models. It is necessary to develop a biological model system suitable for the investigation of environmental pollutant chemical agents, which indicates changes quickly and easily

Can 18F-FDG PET/MR Imaging Contribute to the Assessment of Bone Lesions in Patients with Plasma Cell Dyscrasias?

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Liposomes for topical use: physico-chemical comparison of vesicles prepared from egg or soy lecithin

Developments in nanotechnology and in the formulation of liposomal systems provide the opportunity for cosmetic dermatology to design novel delivery systems. Determination of their physico-chemical parameters has importance when developing a nano-delivery system. The present study highlights some technological aspects/characteristics of liposomes formulated from egg or soy lecithins for topical use. Alterations in the pH, viscosity, surface tension, and microscopic/macroscopic appearance of these vesicular systems were investigated. The chemical composition of the two types of lecithin was checked by mass spectrometry. Caffeine, as a model molecule, was encapsulated into multilamellar vesicles prepared from the two types of lecithin: then zeta potential, membrane fluidity, and encapsulation efficiency were compared. According to our observations, samples prepared from the two lecithins altered the pH in opposite directions: egg lecithin increased it while soy lecithin decreased it with increased lipid concentration. Our EPR spectroscopic results showed that the binding of caffeine did not change the membrane fluidity in the temperature range of possible topical use (measured between 2 and 50 °C). Combining our results on encapsulation efficiency for caffeine (about 30% for both lecithins) with those on membrane fluidity data, we concluded that the interaction of caffeine with the liposomal membrane does not change the rotational motion of the lipid molecules close to the head group region. In conclusion, topical use of egg lecithin for liposomal formulations can be preferred if there are no differences in the physico-chemical properties due to the encapsulated drugs, because the physiological effects of egg lecithin vesicles on skin are significantly better than that of soy lecithin liposomes